


Breathe In, Exhale

by sequence_fairy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Pining Keith (Voltron), Post-Kerberos Mission Failure, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 12:10:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18365744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/pseuds/sequence_fairy
Summary: The firetower shouldn't be a call sign of their relationship, but it is, regardless.Keith breaks through the treeline at the edge of the clearing where the tower stands, chest heaving. Grounded. He’s still grounded. Climbing the tower is the closest he’ll get to the stars now. The ache under his ribs is less open wound and more scabbed over now, but it bleeds fresh at the thought of all that he has lost.





	Breathe In, Exhale

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spookyfoot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookyfoot/gifts).



> For Spook, because she's lovely and I thought she needed this.

The aspen trees are turning from green to gold, leaves trembling in the scant breeze. Above them, the sky is a shock of blue, brilliant and clear. It’s one of those perfect late September days; the sun still warm enough that Keith had pulled off his shirt halfway up the trail. Sweat dampens his hairline and makes his bangs stick to his forehead. The forest hasn’t started to smell like autumn yet, it still smells of sun-baked bark and warmed earth.

Birds call, the trees creak and Keith breathes in time with the forest. The trail is smooth, packed hard from the thousands of feet that have walked it before him. Keith hikes his knapsack up on his shoulder and picks up his pace. The mountain looms in the near distance, his target is invisible at the summit.

The next aspen grove is quiet except for Keith’s breathing. This trail is a relatively easy hike, but Keith is pushing it, nearly running in an effort to get to the top. He wants the summit, wants to feel the steel of the fire lookout’s structure under his palms, because maybe that’ll feel more real than anything else has.

It’s only been a few months since everything fell apart, and even though Keith’s been banned from Garrison property, he still catches himself looking for Shiro in the silence of his solitary existence in the desert. The surreality of the whole situation is entirely beyond comprehension. Keith wonders if it’ll ever feel real, if he’ll ever realise that the weight of Shiro’s tag hanging beside his own around his neck is the only tangible piece of Shiro that he’ll ever get to have. The thoughts dog his heels as he races up an incline, soles of his shoes biting into the dry ground.

He comes out of the edge of the aspen grove into a meadow. Long grass sways in the gentle breeze. For a moment, he thinks to stop, take in the scenery, allow himself a sip of the water in his canteen, but he doesn’t. His ground-eating stride takes him through the meadow, and then into a stand of fir, still climbing.

Aspen trees spring up again and again, in all the swathes of forest destroyed by wildfires. Remnants of those fires remain - blackened stumps of the fir trees, being slowly reclaimed into the detritus of the forest floor. Keith ignores everything he walks past, even the sweeping views to the south and west as he nears the place where the mountain trail runs into the old Government trail. He stops for nothing.

Keith knows this trail like the back of his hand, and he’s running it blind. The now shifts to the then - the first time he and Shiro escaped out here for a weekend off base. Keith’s a child of the desert, but Shiro grew up in the Northwest, and always missed the forest. Every chance he had, he’d drag Keith out to somewhere with trees.

They’d taken the whole day to do this hike, wandering along the trail, stopping to take in the wide views. The last time they’d come, they’d done the Government trail the whole way up, racing each other through switchbacks and laughing at the sign post at Profanity Ridge. They’d had lunch in the shadow of the firetower.

Keith hitches his knapsack up higher on his shoulders.

He remembers the drive back to Alpine after, Shiro’s arm resting on the open window, the highway disappearing under the wheels of the truck, while a retro station fuzzed in and out on the stereo. He’d felt invincible, like nothing could ever come between them.

Keith knows better now. He should have known better then.

That last trip out had been just before Shiro had put his name in for the Kerberos mission, just before Keith had moved into a few of the advanced flight classes, and then suddenly, he was standing on concrete, watching the Persephone lift off and into the early morning sky, thinking about how Shiro was going to chase the stars all the way out into the night and how Keith was still grounded.

Keith breaks through the treeline at the edge of the clearing where the tower stands, chest heaving. Grounded. He’s still grounded. Climbing the tower is the closest he’ll get to the stars now. The ache under his ribs is less open wound and more scabbed over now, but it bleeds fresh at the thought of all that he has lost.

The tower is stark against the brilliant sky. Steel scaffolding holds it high up over the trees, the live-in cabin at the top. It’s empty now, a relic of a time when fire seasons were a fact of life and satellite and radar surveillance of the forests could not be done to the same degree of efficacy. That first time they’d come up to the base of the tower, Keith had mused about how quiet it would be to live up high, view of the forest unobstructed for miles. 

They’d climbed the tower to peer into the darkened windows. There’d been not a whole lot of anything inside, just furniture covered in sheets. Shiro had tried the door, but it remained stubbornly locked, and though Keith could have picked the lock without too much trouble, Shiro had argued in favour of lunch instead of breaking and entering.

Keith stands at the base of the tower now, and looks up. The staircase will probably still hold him, he thinks, even though he can see the rust that’s begun to eat at the structure. He climbs. The steep stairs are reasonably sturdy, but Keith is still careful with each step. He doesn’t want to fall. The peeling paint on the railing flakes off under Keith’s palms. Reaching the first landing gives him a chance to pause, but Keith pushes on after only a moment. 

The last step before the deck creaks ominously under his boot. Keith’s stomach swoops, then settles as he puts both feet down on the top deck. Up here, the wind is more than just a breeze and it howls past his ears, tangling through his hair. His exposed skin ripples with goosebumps. Keith shivers.

Just as the wind is merciless, so is the sun. It warms his shoulders as he walks the length of the wrap-around deck. The door into the cabin is still locked, but this time Keith doesn’t have Shiro to keep him from picking the lock. It’s quick work.

The door opens without much trouble, hinges creaking as it swings wide.

Inside, the air is stale and smells of old smoke and dust. The wind kicks up a cloud until Keith gets the door shut behind him. He sneezes, violently, once, as the dust settles again. The sun shines weakly through the dirty windows that take up most of all four of the walls. Motes hang in the air. Keith steps forward, feet sinking into the old carpet that covers the floor. It’s colour is faded and obscured, but Keith thinks it might’ve been green in a previous life.

The bed sits behind a low partition wall to his left, the kitchenette with it’s two burner camp stove to his right. There’s a hole where the fridge would have been, under the counter. Everything is covered in layer of dust. A desk sits pushed up against the far bank of windows, and a large table takes up the rest of the space. 

Curiosity gets the better of him, and Keith opens the kitchen cupboards, looking to see what might have been left behind. He finds a fork in a drawer, an empty box of saltines and a jar of instant coffee. He turns the still-sealed jar over in his hands, and his eyes bug out at the best before date - it would have been out of date nearly ten years before he was born. He puts it back, and moves towards the desk. Six books are stacked in a pile beside it, spines facing into the room. Keith bends to read them. 

They’re all that kind of terrible retro science-fiction that Shiro used to love. Keith’s face makes a complicated expression halfway between a smile and a grimace. If they’d broken in that day, Shiro would have crowed happily about the books and probably stuffed them into his backpack, unable to abandon them. Keith doesn’t do anything except press his fingers gently to the topmost volume, and then straighten. 

The desk holds nothing of interest, even though Keith pulls open every drawer. There’s a faded park map stuffed into the back corner of the last drawer he pulls out. Keith leaves it where it is. 

Each of Keith’s footsteps through the cabin are marked behind him, boot prints evident in the dusty carpet. He makes a full circuit, but there’s nothing else to see. The books beside the desk draw his eye again, but Keith turns away. He has no use for them, and they were always Shiro’s preference anyway. Keith’s never been one to read for pleasure, and anyway, he doesn’t want to carry them down the mountain. 

He takes one last look out through a grimy window. The forest stretches for miles in every direction, green and silent and unmoving. What would it have been like, he wonders, to live out and up here for an entire fire season? Day after day of staring out into the forest, living on canned food, reading terrible novels and doing endless hours of crosswords? There used to be other towers, Keith knows, and each would have had a radio. Would they have talked to each other? Played games of twenty questions and I Spy?

Keith thinks he might have been suited for this kind of life, if only it had been his choice. It wouldn’t be all that different from what he does now, except for the company. 

Keith locks the door behind him carefully when he leaves. He climbs down the stairs without a backward glance. 

In the shade of the tower, he unpacks his meagre lunch. His canteen water is still cool, and the apple is a burst of sweet flavour in his mouth. He makes it last, eating it right down to the core before tossing the remnants towards the treeline. The protein bars, he scarfs indiscriminately. There’s nothing to be gained by making them last any longer than they have to, since they’re the cheap ones and taste mostly of sawdust. 

Keith washes the lot down with a healthy gulp from his canteen.

Bird song rises from the trees. The breeze shifts. Keith pulls his shirt out of his pack, balls it up and sets it behind him to use as a pillow. Above him, the sky is still brilliantly blue. Beneath him, the grass is soft. The scent of warmed earth curls around him, and Keith lets his eyes fall shut. He can rest for a moment here before he heads back down to the trailhead. 

Keith dreams.

It’s night, the Garrison halls are garishly lit. There are no shadows. Voices travel down the corridor. Keith presses his back against the unforgiving wall, keen to keep himself from being seen. 

Something orange catches his eye, and Keith looks down. He’s wearing cadet orange, and now that he’s noticed, he can feel the starch of the collar scratching against the back of his neck. Keith tugs down the sleeves of his uniform, and then the hem of the coat. It’s as ill-fitting as his hand-me-down was at the start of his tenure at The Galaxy Garrison, when all they’d had to give a student transferring in mid-year was something made for someone else. 

Keith shifts in the dream, polished floor beneath his feet squeaking at the skid of his boots. The voices stop.

Keith tenses.

“Cadet!” Flight Leader Laurens snaps.

Keith lifts his chin. It was defiance then, and it’s defiance now. “Ma’am,” he says, voice carefully neutral.

“It’s after hours, what are you doing out of your dorm?” Laurens’ gaze is shrewd. She’d always had it out for him, Keith thinks, always looking for someway to keep him under her heel. 

What is he doing out after hours? Keith doesn’t know. This is a dream, he knows, because in the memory, he’d had to look a long way up at Flight Leader Laurens, and now he can look her in the eye. He squares his shoulders. 

“He’s with me, Flight Leader.” Shiro’s voice pulls Keith up short. He almost doesn’t want to look, but his own body betrays him and he turns. It’s like a straight shot to the solar plexus. The air leaves Keith’s lungs in a woosh and pain bursts beneath his sternum. 

Shiro’s so real. It’s almost too much to look at him. Keith’s memory of him is so perfect, so carefully nurtured, that no detail is spared. Nothing else in the hallway is in as high definition as Shiro, and Keith let’s himself have a long look, one he never would have allowed himself before.

Shiro’s uniform sits on his shoulders like it was made for them, which, Keith thinks, it probably was. The officer’s greys suit him, the tailoring of the coat accenting Shiro’s trim waist in relation to the broadness of his shoulders. At his wrists, Keith can see the stimulation bracelets peeking out from under the cuffs. Only Shiro could make the universally ugly uniform pants look good, and his boots are unscuffed and look freshly polished. 

Keith had always been jealous of Shiro’s ability to keep his boots clean. No matter what Keith did, no matter how careful he was, his boots always seemed to end up in worse and worse shape. Keith remembers a night in Shiro’s quarters, a solo dorm room at the end of a long hallway - a reward for Shiro’s excelling in all things, where Shiro had tried to teach Keith how to polish his boots to the sheen that Shiro’s always had. They’d given up after Keith had tipped the boot black over, and spent the rest of the night huddled on Shiro’s bunk, watching old movies on Shiro’s tablet. The memory makes Keith feel warm, and he lets the feeling flow through him, looking up to meet Shiro’s gaze.

Warm grey eyes, dark brows and his mouth curved into the kind of grin that had always made Keith’s stomach flip, because it meant that Shiro was up to something. His bangs flop into his face, his fade trimmed to the perfect length to run your palm backwards over – Keith’s hands twitch at his sides. Shiro had always loved that, made Keith do it over and over every time he had his hair buzzed. 

The world narrows the longer Keith looks into Shiro’s eyes. Soon, Flight Leader Laurens is forgotten by the dream and the only thing Keith can see is Shiro. 

The background shivers, loses focus, then comes back, and now they’re inside the Persephone. Shiro’s in the pilot’s chair and Keith is somehow both wedged between it and the co-pilot’s seat and also suspended in space. Keith can still feel the starch of his collar on the back of his neck.

Alarms wail and red lights flash on the console, but Shiro doesn’t look away from Keith. Keith can hear Matt’s voice, strained with fear, but Shiro’s gaze doesn’t waver. Out of the corner of his eye, Keith sees something looming in the viewscreen, but he can’t seem to pull his gaze away from Shiro to see what’s coming.

Somewhere, Commander Holt is yelling, and Keith hears Matt again, but all he has eyes for is Shiro.

They hit the surface at terminal velocity, and Keith wakes up with a shout, his mind full of Shiro’s unblinking stare and the words ‘Pilot Error’ overlaid, blinking in brilliant red. 

For half a second, Keith doesn’t know where he is. His heart thunders in his chest, every breath feels like the time he took a drag off one of his dad’s discarded cigarettes and Keith coughs, curling over himself. Keith squeezes his eyes shut against the burn of tears. He will not cry. He hasn’t yet, and he doesn’t plan on starting now.

Eventually, Keith can swallow past the lump in his throat and breathe without feeling like he’s been maced. He uncurls, and leans back again, tipping his head back towards the sky. The sun has dropped lower in the sky, and the shadow of the tower has grown long in the time Keith has been asleep. He needs to get back down to the trailhead.

Keith repacks his knapsack after another drag from his canteen, and gets to his feet, picking up his shirt as he goes. He snaps it out, shaking off the dried grass that has stuck to the fabric and then pulls it back on over his head. The feel of the material makes his skin twitch. Keith rolls his shoulders and then reaches down for his bag, slinging it over one shoulder. 

He leaves the clearing with the firetower, casting one last look at the structure before he heads back under the canopy. The tower is stark against the sky, lonely and standing tall as a reminder of the reason it was built. A reminder of a network of observers that kept the forest and all those things around it, safe from the flames. Maybe this hike was a bad idea, Keith thinks, pressing his hand against the burned out stump of what was a huge fir tree. The bark has almost completely gone to charcoal. It crunches under his palm, and when Keith pulls away, his hand is stained black with the remnants of an old fire. 

Keith knows it wasn’t pilot error that killed Shiro, knows the Garrison isn’t even sure that he and Matt and Commander Holt are dead. Grief seems like a useless emotion in the face of that uncertainty, anger had seemed much more effective until it got him kicked out of the only place he might’ve been able to find an answer about what had really happened.

Truth be told, he’s not even sure what he thought coming out here might do. Was he looking for some kind of closure? Some sign that Shiro is or isn’t out there? What was he hoping to find at the top of Escudilla Mountain that he hadn’t found already out in the desert? Keith doesn’t know. Frustration burns out the remaining ache that had lingered after the bad dream.

The best way to deal with that, Keith knows, is to move. So, he pushes off the burned out stump and continues down the trail.

He arrives at the trailhead just as the sun drops behind the mountain, the shadows lengthening into dusk as he tosses his knapsack into the backseat of his truck and then climbs in after it. 

Keith starts the truck, listens to the rumble, and then pushes it into gear. He pulls out onto the road, makes a quick u-turn and heads back towards town. He’ll push past Alpine tonight, pull off at a rest area and sleep for a couple of hours, before heading back to the desert. 

The radio station is fuzzy, the signal coming in and out, but the song filtering out of the speakers is the same one from that last hike with Shiro. Keith flips the dial viciously, silencing the stereo. 

Back on the mountain, aspens tremble. 

**Author's Note:**

> Please come and chat with me about my fic on [tumblr](http://sequencefairy.tumblr.com) or on [twitter](https://twitter.com/warpspeed_chic).


End file.
